The blood-brain barrier is the primary obstacle to efficient intracerebral drug delivery. Focused ultrasound, in conjunction with microbubbles, is a targeted and non-invasive way to disrupt the blood-brain barrier. Many commercially available ultrasound contrast agents and agents specifically designed for therapeutic purposes have been investigated in ultrasound-mediated blood-brain barrier opening studies. The new generation of sono-sensitive agents, such as liquid-core droplets, can also potentially disrupt the blood-brain barrier after their ultrasound-induced vaporization. In this review, we describe the different compositions of agents used for ultrasound-mediated blood-brain barrier opening in recent studies, and we discuss the challenges of the past five years related to the optimal formulation of agents.
Keywords: blood-brain barrier; bubble; droplet; phase-change contrast agent; ultrasound.